Many higher education institutions use admission criteria to match students with the educational requirements of the institution, thereby increasing the level of success of their students and allocating limited enrollment space in some cases. This study uses two different approaches to identify the affect students’ background characteristics have on first year cumulative GPA, and whether differences exist in the impact of high school grades on success in their first year in college between high schools in the state of Washington. Results show that students’ particular high schools systematically perform better or worse than the model predicts, holding the other characteristics of the students constant including their high school GPA. This suggests the same GPA from different schools is indicating different levels of preparedness, either reflecting different curriculum available or taken by a student, or grade inflations differences across schools.

许多高等教育机构使用录取标准来匹配学生的教育要求，因此提高了他们的学生的成功水平，并在某些情况下分配有限的招生空间。本研究采用两种不同的方法来确定学生的背景特征对第一年累积GPA的影响，以及高中成绩对大学第一年成功的影响在华盛顿州的高中之间是否存在差异。结果显示，特定高中的学生系统地表现比模型预测的好或差，保持学生的其他特征不变，包括他们的高中GPA。这表明，不同学校的相同GPA表明了不同程度的准备，要么反映了不同的课程可用或学生采取的不同，要么反映了不同学校之间的分数膨胀差异。